If we wish to form a clear idea of Galileo's services to science, we must not only take account of his great inventions and discoveries, but also of his elegant style, his comprehensive sagacity and fertility of argument, whether on behalf of truth or in the exposure of error. This was insisted upon in the Supplement to the 7th Edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" by Professor Playfair, who wrote: "The 'Dialogues on the Two Systems' are written with such singular felicity that one reads them at the present day, when the truths contained in them are known and admitted, with all the delight of novelty, and feels one's self carried back to the period when the telescope was first directed to the heavens, and when the earth's motion with its train of consequences was proved for the first time. Of all the writers who have lived in an age which was only emerging from ignorance and barbarism, Galileo has most entirely the tone of true philosophy, and is most free from the contamination of the time in taste, sentiment, and opinion."
